2026 is the year of Toy Story. The fifth installment in Pixar’s tentpole film series is arriving on the big screen in just a few weeks and, now, a host of old Toy Story video games are getting another chance to shine a few months after the film drops.
Toy Story: Retro Roundup includes six games
The late 90s and 2000s were the golden age of licensed movie tie-in video games. Many of them were quite poorly received and simply followed the beats of the movie they were based on. Almost every single Pixar movie of that era had a video game tied to it, from The Incredibles to Cars; even Finding Nemo had one.
At the time, the Toy Story duology was so popular that it not only had video game tie-ins for Toy Story and Toy Story 2, but also games like Toy Story Racer and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, which didn’t follow the plot of the movies but instead followed the 2000 TV animated TV series of the same name. Many more Toy Story games were released throughout the rest of the 2000s, like the much more popular Toy Story 3 game and the Wii’s Toy Story Mania. Years later, 2019’s Kingdom Hearts III heavily featured Woody, Buzz, and the gang in one of its major worlds, Toy Box.
Toy Story 3 Game is getting remastered
Now, seemingly in celebration of this year’s release of Toy Story 5, Atari and Digital Eclipse are bringing a whole batch of old Toy Story games from the 90s and early 2000s to modern platforms. Called Toy Story: Retro Roundup, the bundle includes both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 video games, Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, and Toy Story Racer. For good measure, the 1998 A Bug’s Life video game is also being thrown in, which sort of makes sense considering it was Pixar’s second feature film and released in between the first two Toy Story movies before the turn of the century.
With the Bug’s Life game included, that’s six total games in the Retro Roundup package. That’s not all, though, as the Toy Story 3 video game is getting a remaster known as Toy Story 3: Complete Edition, releasing on the same day as Toy Story: Retro Roundup: October 15. The original Toy Story 3 game came out back in 2010 around the release of the fan-favorite third movie, and was available on a ton of surprising platforms at the time, including Mac, iOS, PS2, and the PSP, as well as all the more typical platforms of the era: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and the Wii. Now, it’s coming to a host of modern platforms with upgraded visuals and a playable Zurg on all platforms, a character that was previously exclusive to the PS3 version of the game.
It seems clear that this big Toy Story game refresh was done because of Toy Story 5. With Pixar about to enter a new stretch of sequels that include Incredibles 3 and a rumored third Monsters film, perhaps those old game tie-ins from the 2000s will receive a remaster or port of some kind as well. For now, though, fans of Toy Story are about to have a good time this year.
Toy Story: Retro Roundup and Toy Story 3: Complete Edition are coming to Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo Switch on October 15.
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